Scan barcode
A review by beets_enjoyer
Cuando los físicos asaltaron los mercados: La historia de cómo se trató de predecir lo impredecible by James Owen Weatherall
4.0
Terrific book, if not for the faint of heart (or shy of numbers). While a letdown after reading the true master of this genre, Michael Lewis, I found Weatherall's prose to be serviceable. He does a decent job of making you interested in the fascinating outsiders (like Louis Bachelier and Fischer Black, to name a few) that made the initial leap of faith from math and physics over to investing.
Where Weatherall really shines, though, is when he's explaining the various abstruse concepts that underlie the subject of his book. Random walks, gauge theory and the Kelly criterion are all laid out in gloriously understandable analogies. They might require some background in stats or math for you to understand them perfectly, but not much.
One star is deducted for its heavy-handed and slightly anti-climactic ending chapters. Instead of ending with a big bang, Weatherall instead descends into a whimper of a look at how physics might be used to make better political decisions. His call for a "Manhattan Project" to this end falls flat and ends up fairly unconvincing (and boring).
I was otherwise impressed with this book and would recommend it.
Where Weatherall really shines, though, is when he's explaining the various abstruse concepts that underlie the subject of his book. Random walks, gauge theory and the Kelly criterion are all laid out in gloriously understandable analogies. They might require some background in stats or math for you to understand them perfectly, but not much.
One star is deducted for its heavy-handed and slightly anti-climactic ending chapters. Instead of ending with a big bang, Weatherall instead descends into a whimper of a look at how physics might be used to make better political decisions. His call for a "Manhattan Project" to this end falls flat and ends up fairly unconvincing (and boring).
I was otherwise impressed with this book and would recommend it.